No decent woman ever sat in a hotel room waiting for an illicit lover to arrive, and Freddy knew it. The longer she waited for Dal to return, the more skittish, anxious, and uncertain she became. She would have fled except she had used her leftover bathwater to launder her trail clothes and they were draped around the room, still wet.
Wrapped in a towel, she sat beside an open window letting a warm breeze dry her freshly washed hair while she chewed a fingernail and suffered pangs of regret for ever agreeing to this tryst. What had she been thinking of? In Frisco’s opinion, he was doing right by bringing her here, but he wouldn’t have forced her. At heart he was a man of integrity.
Which meant that she was here by choice. Admitting this did not go down well.
There were so many points against him, she thought, brooding. His weakness for whiskey. His past association with Lola. His work history. His similarity to her father. Moreover, Freddy had always rejected the attentions of ranchers. She didn’t want to end up stuck out in the middle of nowhere with no one but cattle and cowboys for company.
On the other hand, Dal was educated, and a natural leader. He was confident and strong. He could quote lines from plays and literature. He was ambitious and hardworking; he possessed a certain rough charm. He had dreams.
But the main reason she had agreed to ruin herself once and for all was because he had awakened something inside her. His slow smile and those intense, narrowed, blue eyes dropped the bottom out of her stomach and made her wild with desire. He had hinted there was more than the disappointment they had experienced on the range, and she yearned to know what that might be.
Sighing, she lifted a length of hair to the fading sunlight and gazed around the room. The furnishings were nicer than she had expected to find in a frontier town. The bedstead, desk, table, and chairs were made of polished cherrywood. A chintz settee and armchair added warm splashes of color. The decorative touch she most liked was a painted dressing screen.
Nervously, Freddy clutched her hands in her lap. She wanted to run away. She wished he would get here.
By the time Dal’s knock sounded at the door, causing her to jump out of her skin, she had donned her damp clothing with the firm intention of leaving. Where she would go, she didn’t know. She only knew that she couldn’t wait another minute—she had to get out of here. The bed had grown in size and importance until it totally dominated the room.
“Freddy? Open the door.”
She stood on the other side, twisting her hat in her hands, suffering a spasm of indecision. “I think I’ve changed my mind about this,” she said finally. Then she uttered words she had never thought to hear on her lips. “I want to return to the herd.”
“Freddy, open the damned door and let me in.”
“Did you bring the wagon or a horse? I need a horse.” With half a dozen herds camped outside Fort Worth, she worried whether she could find the King’s Walk outfit.
“Do you suppose we could discuss this while we’re both standing in the same room?” He sounded exasperated and pounded on the door again.
“If I let you inside, you’ll just try to talk me out of leaving,” she said uncertainly. “Wait a minute. Something’s going on under the window.”
Leaving Dal standing in the hotel corridor swearing, she returned to the window and leaned out. Two stories below, four Mexican musicians stood grouped around a lantern at their feet. They tipped broad sombreros and smiled up at her, then lifted violins to their chins and played a love song so sweet and filled with longing that it raised a lump in Freddy’s throat. “Oh!”
Caught in the music, several minutes passed before she noticed the pounding on the door. “Dal?” she said, crossing the room and placing her hand on the knob. “Did you arrange for the musicians?” It was a nice gesture, lovely really. And she could hardly leave in the middle of their serenade; that would be rude. She was stuck until the musicians finished their performance.
“I swear to you. If you don’t open this door—right now—I’m going to kick it down.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and hesitated, then opened the door wide enough to peek into the hallway. “We’re only going to talk, we’re not—” She stared at the packages surrounding his feet. “What’s all that?”
“Gifts.”
Freddy suspected the old warning to beware of Greeks bearing gifts might also apply to cowboys. Then she realized he didn’t look like a work-worn drover tonight.